Episode 332: Who Pays for Climate Damage? Climate Litigation, Attribution and Accountability with Dr Rupert Stuart-Smith

ByElla Burden

In this episode of The International Risk Podcast, Dominic Bowen speaks with Dr Rupert Stuart-Smith about the rapid expansion of climate litigation and what it means for corporate strategy, financial stability, and international risk. The discussion explores how climate lawsuits have evolved from targeted environmental challenges into a structural feature of the climate transition, reshaping…

Dr Rupert Stuart-Smith

Dr Rupert Stuart-Smith

ByElla Burden

Dr Rupert Stuart-Smith is the Deputy Director and a Senior Research Fellow in Climate Science and the Law at the Oxford Sustainable Law Programme, University of Oxford. His work sits at the intersection of climate science, legal accountability, and financial risk, examining how scientific advances are reshaping accountability in the climate transition. Trained in climate…

Climate Litigation and Risk: Who Pays for Climate Damage?

Climate Litigation and Risk: Who Pays for Climate Damage?

ByElla Burden

Ten years after the adoption of the Paris Agreement, the fight over climate responsibility has moved from the halls of diplomacy to courtrooms around the world. Climate litigation is increasingly being deployed as a device to test, enforce, and sometimes redefine climate obligations across jurisdictions. It does not replace political negotiation, regulatory reform, or market…

Episode 328: Food Security and Systemic Resilience: National Preparedness in Globally Integrated Food Systems with Professor Tim Lang

ByElla Burden

In this episode of The International Risk Podcast, Dominic Bowen speaks with Professor Tim Lang about the systemic risks facing global food security and how interdependent global supply chains, energy markets, and trade governance shape national resilience. The discussion highlights how domestic food insecurity is rarely confined within national borders: disruptions in production, logistics, or…

Professor Tim Lang

Professor Tim Lang

ByElla Burden

Tim Lang is Emeritus Professor of Food Policy at City St George’s, University of London, and founding Director of the Centre for Food Policy established in 1994 as a leading centre for research and education on food system dynamics. His research and scholarship focuses on the intersections of health, environment, politics, and society within modern…

Aerial shot of a harvester working a cornfield in rural Austin, MN during fall season.

Food Security and Systemic Resilience: Preparing for Cascading Risks in Modern Food Systems

ByElla Burden

Food security is frequently treated as a domestic policy metric: a function of agricultural output, food prices, and household purchasing power. Yet, in an era defined by dense global trade networks and digitally mediated supply chains, national food systems operate as interdependent nodes within a transnational system. Producers, maritime corridors, energy markets and regulatory authorities…

Episode 324: Syria’s Shifting Identity and Political Landscape with Ola Rifai

ByElla Burden

In this episode of the International Risk Podcast, Dominic Bowen speaks with Ola Rifai about the evolution of Syrian identity and how competing narratives of nationalism, sectarianism, and statehood have shaped Syria’s political trajectory and risk before and after 2011. Find out more about how identity was managed under the Assad regime, how sectarianisation unfolded…

Ola Rifai

Ola Rifai

ByElla Burden

Ola Rifai is Deputy Director of the Centre for Syrian Studies (CSS) at the University of St Andrews, where her research focuses on the international politics of the Middle East. Her work examines identity politics, nationalism, sectarianism, and ethnic conflict, with particular attention to Syria and the broader contemporary region. Her scholarship engages with the…

A large crowd gathers in a city square waving Syrian flags during a protest.

Syria’s Shifting Identity and Political Landscape

ByElla Burden

Syria is often examined primarily through the angle of geopolitics, armed conflict, and regional power competition. Yet one of the most consequential, and comparatively underexplored, dimensions of the Syrian crisis concern identity: how Syrian identity was historically constructed, how it fragmented under the pressures of war, and whether it can be meaningfully reconstituted in a…